Rise in support for centre-left parties in Israel leaves Netanyahu scrambling to form a stable coalition

Benjamin Netanyahu scrambling to form a stable coalition after vote

ANALYSIS

The next days and weeks will test Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s powers of persuasion and compromise like nothing he has confronted before during several decades in the hurly-burly of Israeli public life.

A dramatic rise in support for centre-left parties whose primary focus was on social and economic issues resulted in what Israel Radio described Wednesday as a virtual dead heat between the right and the centre-left in Tuesday’s general election. This likely means that Mr. Netanyahu will have greater difficulty getting political backing to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months. It will also seriously complicate his ambition to expand Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The tricky process of forming a new coalition will begin Thursday when Bibi — as he is universally known in Israel — meets with the leaders of deeply religious parties such as Shas, who have been among his closest allies. After that, the prime minister will hold the first of what may end up being many negotiations with popular broadcaster Yair Lapid, whose new, secular There is a Future party did far better than pollsters or anyone else had predicted.

Having gone to the polls early and with what was widely thought to be an unassailable lead, Mr. Netanyahu suddenly faces humbling choices as he begins his third term as prime minister if he is to form a coalition that does not quickly collapse. If he leans too far to the left he could face a revolt from many deeply conservative members of his own Likud-Israel Beiteinu alliance, which is already reeling from the loss of 11 of its 42 seats.

If Mr. Netanyahu opts to stick with the religious parties on the right, he must also bring in the new, staunchly pro-settler Jewish Home Party. But in doing so he risks further alienating middle class Israelis who demonstrated through the ballot box Tuesday that they want their government to urgently address the high cost of living and related issues such as housing.

“With King Bibi’s ship of state sinking in Pyrrhic victory, the sharks begin to circle,” was how Bradley Burston put it in a commentary in Wednesday’s Haaretz newspaper. “In the space of a few hours Netanyahu watched as the American people formally gave their president four more years and the people of Israel gave their prime minister a few more hours.”

An example of the potential hazards in forming the “broad coalition” that Mr. Netanyahu talked about in what was not really a victory speech Tuesday night is the exemption from military service and generous subsidies that ultra-Orthodox Jews have received in return for supporting the government. Opposition to those who escape military duty and spend their lives praying rather than working is one of the main reasons that Mr. Lapid and his There is a Future party won the second highest number of seats in the next Knesset.

Another problem for Mr. Netanyahu is that the Jewish Home Party and its charismatic young leader, Naftali Bennett, have been adamant that the Palestinians must never have a homeland. Another reason that There is a Future went from zero seats in the last Knesset to 19 seats in the next one was its insistence there must be a two-state solution. Or as the political novice Mr. Lapid has demanded, Mr. Netanyahu must address “the diplomatic stalemate” that has existed for several years between Israel and the Palestinians.

It is hard to imagine how Mr. Netanyahu will be able to keep a future cabinet happy for long if it has ultra-Orthodox members who want to preserve their perquisites, other religiously driven parties who want the settlements in the West Bank to be the bulwark of a Greater Israel and the centre-left parties which want nothing to do with either of these ideas.

Still, it could have been worse if the 20% of the electorate, who consider themselves Palestinian Israelis, had turned out to vote in far greater numbers. To express their extreme dissatisfaction with, and indifference towards, Israel, only one in three bothered to go to the polls. As a result, the three Arab parties won just 12 seats.

If two-thirds of the Arab minority had turned out to vote, as their Jewish Israeli compatriots did, the Arab parties would have won about 24 seats. Such a result would have obliged Mr. Netanyahu to include a few more centre-left deputies sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in his government.

The only plus for Mr. Netanyahu that may arise from Tuesday’s election shock is that if the prime minister forms a broader national unity government that has more moderate policies concerning the Palestinians and which shows more flexibility about how to thwart Iran’s nuclear plans, Israel’s badly strained relations with the U.S. and Europe are likely to improve.

Those two crucial files are what matter the most to the world. But for the moment about half of the Israeli electorate has shouted that it is most concerned with inequalities in their own lives.